


Alight

by Vana



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, And a lot of fanart, Gen, M/M, inspired by something my kid won at a party, welp, what even??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-04-13
Packaged: 2019-04-22 06:25:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14302788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vana/pseuds/Vana
Summary: Hmm... just a little something that caught me late at night after a long and weird day. I look at this bird in my house and it's perched on the glass head sitting on my mantel. There's something uncanny valley about the bird on the head, sort of like this universe I'm writing in.





	Alight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [puella_peanut](https://archiveofourown.org/users/puella_peanut/gifts).



There was a toy Roy once won at a birthday party; he had pulled it out of some kind of treasure chest while he was blindfolded. The other kids got temporary tattoos or gummy bracelets but he somehow got _this._ He called it the balance bird, he was five, he didn’t have any other name for it. It balanced on the sharp point of its beak on any surface that was even marginally flat. Roy’s classmates played with it while he kept one eye on it; not too possessive, that way would lie thievery. Pretend you like something too much and someone is bound to take it from you.

One kid tilted his head up and put the damn thing on his nose. “Not in your _nostril_ ,” Roy had started in alarm, because that was gross, he didn’t want his balance bird all boogery. But it was just on the tip of the kid’s nose, and everyone stood there staring, half laughing, half kind of amazed, even the grownups because wow, that must hurt a little, and wow, it’s like it’s landing on his _face_.

And five-year-old Roy had just learned the word “nostril” and he saw that his balance bird’s beak was not collecting six-year-old boogers and he was relieved.

When he finally got it back — first, everyone had to admire the little pockmarked dent in the other kid’s nose — anyway Roy got it back and he took it home and he put it all over the place. On the corner of the coffee table. On his dad’s big helmet. On the back of a rocker, where it clattered off with a noise that scared Roy. _Oh no_ … But it was all right, the rocker, the bird, the floor, his mom — they didn’t love a lot of noise. But it was all right this time.

He would lie still at night, weeks later, and put the bird on his hand. “I’m a hawker,” he would say, in that solemn little voice, alone in his bed. Then on his forehead. _Ouch_ , but it couldn’t have been worse than the kid with the nose. On his knee. On the tip of his toe. That made Roy laugh so he shook and the bird would fall harmlessly onto the bed. On his heart, once. He saw the plastic, yet somehow alive wings of the thing rise and fall with his own small heartbeat. He watched them flutter with his breath and he fell asleep, bird on his breast, calm in his heart. In the morning he awoke with a yelp because he had rolled over onto the sharp beak of the thing and it had pierced his thigh. Nothing serious, although he did like a nice Band-Aid now and then. But it wouldn’t do to tell his mother he’d been sleeping with the balance bird and he didn’t know how else he could explain the little gash. So he left it uncovered and at school dabbed tissue on it until the mark had pinkened and almost gone away. He felt very grown-up. _I’m taking care of myself now,_ he thought. _This is what grownups do._

One day a long time later, he met a boy. His golden hair sang in the cherry blossom breeze and and his eyes challenged and scanned you like prey or a guardian; his voice soared up-up-up in anger and excitement and Roy was pierced, a bright blood spot he couldn’t show because he would have to do so many things — _take care of_ no, _watch out for_ maybe, _watch soar_ yes, that was it, that white head and yellow feather, the blue-tipped wings metallic but real. _Edward Elric_ like the chattering of a whipporwill in the trees outside his childhood home; _Alchemist_ like a secret shiver in a dark and brave bedroom. If you show you care for something too much, someone takes it away, but once in a great while, the pull of the care is more powerful than the contrarian universe and the thing stays. It stays, dammit.

The balance bird, faded with childhood sunshine and magnetic and powerful, swayed in a current Roy couldn’t feel but he knew it was there — the breath of the future, the hum of possibility. He still had no true name for the balance bird, but he knew where it would alight: right there above his heart, with no sting at all.

**Author's Note:**

> Hmm... just a little something that caught me late at night after a long and weird day. I look at this bird in my house and it's perched on the glass head sitting on my mantel. There's something uncanny valley about the bird on the head, sort of like this universe I'm writing in.


End file.
